Padel iQ founder Morten Wiegandt is a natural disruptor. He is always looking to question the status quo, optimise and raise standards.
That’s what is motivating the Dane to shake up the padel court booking industry with his bespoke app – and it was also his first instinct when he found himself wheelchair-bound for six months and was told by doctors that his professional squash career was over.
After becoming Denmark national champion for the first time in 1997, Morten was at a celebration in the town hall when his knees seized up. He couldn’t move and had to be carried home. It turned out he had ankylosing spondylitis – chronic arthritis that later spread to his spinal cord.
Morten tells The Padel Paper: “I was told I could never play squash again and that I may not be able to walk after a certain age. I had mornings when I had to crawl to the bathroom.
“Later, there was some medicine invented for my condition, but I was told there would be side effects. I didn’t accept that. I did my own experiments, taking bigger or smaller doses and changing my diet. After all this, I battled back and I became Danish champion again. I never gave up.”
The 44-year-old equates that battle to his current quest to take on the well-known industry big hitters in the online padel court booking business.
Having studied law and started several businesses (including a chain of squash clubs, a squash equipment store, a squash magazine and Denmark’s biggest padel retailer Padel Life), Morten focused on software for racket sports players.
“We had so many people in the shop saying they had given up squash because their regular partner stopped playing or moved away,” explains Morten. “I thought, ‘That’s so stupid!’ In an age when people can find the love of their life online, why can’t they find a squash partner?
“The administration software was so outdated. Why couldn’t that change? So many industries work the way they do just because it’s always been done that way. But my mind cannot help thinking all the time about how things can be done better. I don’t accept the hand that is dealt to me. I’m the kind of guy when I walk into a room, I immediately have 10 ideas of how things can be done differently.”
It took eight years and 120,000 development hours for Morten and a team of developers to build Sportyfriends, which he calls “the most flexible booking and club membership administration engine on the market.” But he adds: “We quickly found out why no-one has gone into this area. The demands are huge – almost every sports centre wanted to do it in a different way.”
In March 2022, he formed a separate company and investment group to launch Padel iQ, a padel-specific spin-off of Sportyfriends.
Morten says Padel iQ’s USP is that it’s customisable. It’s a white label solution, so clubs can keep their customers/members (and potential new members) within their own branded system (they can even have their own bespoke app). There, they can create their own identity, community and unique features – instead of pitching people out on to an external platform where you need to set up a login to access booking – and which also promotes competitors.
“This is a process that would never be accepted in any other mature business,” says Morten. “In the fitness or hotel industry, people would laugh at you if you presented this to them as a solution. You should not ask people to give up control of their own business.
“The club is our customer; we work for them. They want to turn players into members and for those members to be ambassadors to others. You have to build a community to be sustainable. They want to matchmake people within the club environment and with all our features we give centres the best tools to facilitate this.”
The app has an array of customisable features, including a full league system, split payments (equally or otherwise), discounts, easy cancellation or re-scheduling functions, customisable booking rules, referral programmes, easy-to-design bespoke newsletters, advanced membership options and much more.
Padel iQ is used by over 100,000 users in six countries (including the UK’s iPadel League and Padel Project UK) and will be used in a minimum of four more nations by January.
Morten’s argument is that the main protagonists in the court booking business are ring-fencing people within their own platforms, along with their respective limitations and fees.
“Up until now, padel hasn’t really had an alternative,” he states. “We are entering new markets like the UK, Malaysia, Montenegro and the USA with others coming on board all the time.
“Many people there are nervous of being ‘the first’ so they make what look like safe choices and follow the crowd. That has never been my way. We can see the traction starting to take off with key club brands. I feel we have a lot of potential to offer ourselves as a serious alternative.”
